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Salvaging Science NEWS FEATURES By Michael Bawaya ne day during fieldwork in March 2010, Charles Beeker was hav- ing a drink with his dean and several colleagues at his favorite restaurant in Santo Domingo. No- ticing their Indiana University (IU) shirts, an inebriated American staggered over and asked if they were the archaeologists who stole the Captain Kidd shipwreck. The man was Oan investor in a treasure-hunting operation that had searched for months for the remains of Kidd’s ship, the Quedagh Merchant, which famously sank off the southeast coast of the Dominican Republic in 1699. But it was Beeker who had identified the wreck and won international press attention. The investor “started getting a little rowdy,” Beeker recalls. There was pushing and shov- ing, overturned tables and broken glass. “The guy had spent his savings and lost his mar- riage, and I guess he blamed me.” Such is life for Beeker, the founder and director of the Underwater Science Pro- gram at IU Bloomington. “I’ve been work- ing for years to put Beeker (left) inspects treasure hunters out the wreck of Captain of business,” he says. Kidd’s ship, the The treasure hunters, Quedagh Merchant, for their part, would in waters off the like to do the same to Dominican Republic. him. In addition to the occasional fisticuffs, Beeker has been sued (he won), slandered, and harassed by treasure hunters who op- pose his efforts to find, protect, and research historic shipwrecks. To archaeologists such as Beeker, wrecks offer a bounty of information from a single moment in time. But researchers are wag- ing increasingly bitter battles over access to this sunken scientific booty (Science, 17 May 2013, p. 802). Treasure hunters are often supported by investors who hope to profit by selling items from the shipwreck, Beeker says; they offer a portion of the take SALVAGING to governments in exchange for diving and salvage permits. Archaeologists can have a hard time competing because we’re “selling history, not artifacts,” he says. Beeker, 61, claims some success in this battle, uncovering key information for sci- ence and preserving historic wrecks. A big man with a no-nonsense demeanor that can border on gruffness, he is a workaholic who has investigated more than 200 shipwrecks and visited thousands more. Last May, he SCIENCE made the news for evaluating a wreck off the Underwater archaeologist Charles Beeker north coast of Haiti that he thinks could be Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa PHOTO: INDIANA UNIVERSITY INDIANA PHOTO: works to preserve famous wrecks as museums Maria. Other experts disagree, but Beeker SCIENCE sciencemag.org 9 JANUARY 2015 • VOL 347 ISSUE 6218 117 Published by AAAS NEWS | FEATURES Beeker focuses mostly on historic shipwrecks and their diagnostic artifacts, such as a cannon from Kidd’s ship (left), but he has also studied a submerged cavern in the Dominican Republic that yielded the skull of a tiny prehistoric primate as well as artifacts left by prehistoric Native Americans. isn’t backing down, and this week he pre- tance of historic wrecks and clarified their need to be there,” Beeker says. sented his case at the Society for Historical ownership and management on federal, To wean officials from treasure-hunting Archaeology meeting in Seattle. state, and tribal submerged lands. revenue, Beeker offered an alternative: Pro- As satisfying as his discoveries have been, At the time, most people thought that the tect wrecks and earn tourism revenue by Beeker considers his work helping preserve best way to preserve historic shipwrecks creating museums in the sea. “You can only wrecks as dive museums to be his greatest was to raise them for display in museums. sell [a shipwreck] once as a treasure hunt,” achievement. “Beyond the sustainable tour- Beeker and a number of other archaeolo- he told them. “I can sell it forever” as an ism value of living museums, we consider gists stood that concept on its head, bring- underwater museum. the sites living laboratories” for many scien- ing the museum to the wreck rather than The government has bought into the tific disciplines, he says. the reverse. In 1989, he helped create the idea. “Beeker has provided [the] Dominican Establishing underwater museums “is San Pedro Underwater Archaeological Pre- Republic the ‘Living Museums in the Sea’ not unique to Charlie,” says James Delgado, serve State Park in Florida, which features model, which preserves shipwrecks as part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad- the remains of the San Pedro, a Dutch-built our marine environment,” says Francis Soto, ministration’s (NOAA’s) director of mari- ship that sank in 1733. It was plundered by technical director of the underwater patri- time heritage, who’s based in Silver Spring, treasure hunters in the 1960s, but divers and mony program of the country’s Ministry of Maryland, and has known Beeker since the snorkelers can still examine ballast stones, Culture, which oversees shipwrecks. “Rather 1980s. But “he is a leading advocate and has seven replica cannons, and an anchor. than allow important shipwrecks to be exca- done tremendous work … in the theory and Beeker went on to help create 11 more vated for profit, instead they are preserved practice of in situ preservation of shipwreck underwater shipwreck parks in Florida and for future generations.” sites and public outreach with them.” California. By 2000, he and other archaeolo- Shipwreck museums contain mooring gists, most with government agencies, had buoys for boats, historic marker buoys, BEEKER STARTED DIVING at age 11 and formed a national system of marine pro- artifacts, and underwater plaques with was a scuba instructor by 1974. While work- tected areas to preserve wrecks. Beeker “is interpretative information. One, the 1724 ing in a paleobotany lab and taking gradu- one of the few in the academic field” to push Guadalupe Underwater Archaeological Pre- ate classes at IU, he started a scuba training for these museums, Delgado says. serve, “is one of the most dived shipwrecks center and came to realize that his real pas- During the past 20 years, Beeker has in the Dominican Republic,” Soto says, ex- sion was shipwrecks. By 1984, he was teach- joined with the government of the Domini- plored by up to 300 people a day, according ing academic scuba diving at IU. His dives can Republic to establish three underwater to Beeker. have uncovered exquisitely preserved mam- museums, including the Quedagh Merchant The museums are free, but divers bring mal fossils and prehistoric Taíno Indian site. That’s progress, given that a number in revenue by buying equipment, food, lodg- sites, but his focus has been shipwrecks. of treasure hunters, thwarted by preserva- ing, and more. Beeker adds that underwater Back in the 1960s and 1970s, historic tion laws in the United States, had moved traffic tends to inhibit rather than promote shipwrecks had no value beyond explora- east to the Caribbean, where laws are lax vandalism, as people tend to be better be- tion and plunder. Dive magazines glamor- and wrecks plentiful. If a shipwreck isn’t haved when observed. The museums also ized the looting of wrecks. In the 1980s, in a national park, the Dominican Republic protect the ecosystem that has formed Beeker helped change that, serving on a fed- allows treasure hunters to haul up artifacts around the wreck. Large artifacts like an- eral advisory committee that helped draft and sell them, as long as the government chors and cannons offer habitat for hard the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987. The gets half the take. “I tell my students we’re and soft coral and many kinds of fish, “turn- act acknowledged the archaeological impor- in the Dominican Republic because we ing an archaeological project into an envi- UNIVERSITY CHRIS MEYER/INDIANA UNIVERSITY; RIGHT) INDIANA TO (LEFT PHOTOS: 118 9 JANUARY 2015 • VOL 347 ISSUE 6218 sciencemag.org SCIENCE Published by AAAS ronmental project,” Beeker says. wrong message. I’ve never worked with a 15th century origin for the ship. He saw no Beeker has “helped to establish the treasure hunter,” Delgado says. In contrast, copper sheathing and notes that UNESCO [Dominican Republic’s] conservation ca- Beeker decided that archaeologists must hasn’t analyzed the wreck’s wood, bal- pabilities, as well as educating them on ar- “be willing to talk with all stakeholders.” He last, or datable ceramics. He argues that chaeological methods and conservation of agreed to join forces with Clifford, but only UNESCO’s study offers “no real proof” that the sites,” says Steven James, an underwater after the pair had some “fairly heated discus- the wreck is not the Santa Maria. In his archaeologist with Panamerican Consultants sions.” Beeker told Clifford he couldn’t “own” talk at the meeting, he revealed that he was Inc. in Memphis, Tennessee, who has worked the Santa Maria, and Clifford agreed that able to sample the ballast stone. Its com- extensively with Beeker. “Not many people the site and artifacts would be preserved as position included the mineral pigeonite, can lay claim to that.” a museum. “I modified a treasure hunt and which is not native to the Caribbean; more turned it into something good for Haiti,” analysis is needed to determine if it could BACK IN 1699, just before he traveled to New Beeker claims. have come from Spain. York in hopes of acquitting himself of piracy He investigated the site in the spring for Ulrike Guérin, a Paris-based program charges, the infamous Kidd abandoned his 4 days and concluded that, although more specialist for UNESCO’s Secretariat of the vessel, and it was sunk off the coast of the investigation is required, the wreck could 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Dominican Republic.
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